Morning all,
Been a while since I've been in the discussion room, been hectically busy with the new poverty alleviation project, and of course building two new sites.
The first is for a Bed & Breakfast Lodge, which is very simple, Ka-Ma Lodge
The second is for the Richmond publicity association which basically covers all aspects of the village of Richmond; Richmond
I don't know if anyone can help with this one, but I was asked if I could make the links list a scrollable list, I tried to put it into a frame, but the only problem is that if I do put them into an i-frame and make them scrollable, if you click on the link, it opens the new page inside the scrollable link box, which just keeps repeating, unless ofcourse I enable the open in new page facility, which again results in multiple pages being opened, Is there anyway to get around this?
Many Thanks,

For my own site I'm also looking for a user friendly photo album that I can use for my photographic pages, can anyone recommend something?

Michael

Pakedi South Africa

Hi Michael.
Do you want a scroll box like any in the link here? http://develop.eclops.com/how-...scrolling-links.html .
I haven't put your colours or fonts in it's just a basic example.

Do you want the photo album with in your site or can it be on a host? If it doesn't matter I use flickr.com, for an example here's a link for a photo album of a spa I'm selling on ebay http://www.flickr.com/photos/t...how/with/3527613928/ .

Good luck,
Tonga.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tonga,

Tonga’s example is a good one. A quick easy way to utilize the selection list of a form object.

My other suggestions are to use either a “Tree Menu” (third party, such as SoThink Tree Menu), or to use something akin to the code used to develop FAQ sections. An example of which I have thrown together here

Either of my suggestions would require you to group your categories with sub-headings.

If you still want to use iFrames, it is possible to create a link from the “Menu” iFrame, and open that link in another iFrame on your main page. If that is the way you want to go, some javascript links will do the trick.

Terry

Michael,

You have not responded to this thread as yet, but I hope you visit it again.

I’ve had a think about your dilemma, and have came up with a solution to your problem without using javascript.

How I have done it is to place an iFrame on the index page, and give it a name (in my case, “display”).

Make the source of that iFrame the “Home” page, or the first page you want displayed when your site is first visited.

Create a new page that has only the menu items. For the links, make the Link Type “page”.

Select the appropriate page from the Link URL drop-down box.

In the code section, enter

Target=”display”

Of course replacing “display” with the name you have given your main iFrame.

Place another iFrame on the index page, and make it’s source the page that contains the menu items, and select the use scroll bar option.

For an example of what I have done, please click here

I have tested this in IE, FireFox, Chrome, Opera and Safari, and it works fine in all.

The only difference is that in FireFox and Opera, the horizontal scroll bar of the menu’s iFrame is also displayed. This can be fixed by placing a shaded rectangle over the area where it appears.

Terry

Nice solution!
No script, it's good.

This might sound a little too simple, but why not use a scrolling text box, especially if all the links will be text based?

Part of the problem with using i-frame for content is that you will end up with orphan frames. What happens when a search engine finds your home.html page and indexes it? A click from a search reference will open it in a normal window and not the i-frame, so the visitor never gets to see your entire site.

Hi Tonga, Terry and Larry,

My apologies for not responding so promptly, but been struggling with my ISP, had no connection since I posted the thread, suddenly I'm connected again, wonders of modern technology. Anyway I haven't tried Terry's solution yet, just trying to respond quickly, I did try larry's though, but even if I lock the text box, when I open the preview pane, it shows the whole text box without a scroll, how do I get the text box to stay in place and not scroll? I looked at Tonga's examples, and it's exactly what I want the text box to do, but How do I do it, sorry, but I really don't know how to do it. Terry, thanks, but Larry's solution about the search engines has me a little wary of it. So nice to know there's always a little help across the sea.
If anyone has a good way to create the text boxes in SS I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Michael

On your Richmond site, an auto-scroll text box for the links should work.

In the Text Editor set auto-scroll on -- you have probably been doing this. In order for the scroll bar to appear, make the height of the text box less that the height of its content.

Hey Michael,
Good to see you back.
My examples were done the same way that Brucee discribed.

Good luck.

Tonga and Bruce,
Just to set the records straight, I think you are both talking about a Text Object. When we call it a Text Box, some may think we are referring to a Form's Text Box (which could probably also be utilised for this purpose).

Michael,
The only reason I used iFrames as an example was because you already were using iFrames. Even though I only use two frames in my example, you could do as Larry says, and replace the menu iFrame with a text object.

To carry that line further, you need not use any iFrames. To satisfy your doubts about search engines, simply design each page individually, create your menu once in a text object (go to Format > Auto Scroll Box from the Text Editor menu), then use the Include option on the pages where you want it.

Larry,
I do not understand what you mean by “orphan frames”, could you please explain further?


Terry

Yep your right Terry.
I was refering to a text object.

So to Michael the links on the example page I did are done from adding 'auto-scroll' to a 'text object' and then shortening the text object to show the scroll bar on preview or publish.

Cheers,
Tonga.

Hi Michael,
You've got quite a complex site on your hands. Looking at the content I am not convinced if one or another kind of scroll menu will solve the problem IMHO. The main problem with this site, in my opinion, is that it contains a huge amount of information that needs organising. You have some kind of structure in place but I think it can be more lucid and thus easier for the visitor to navigate around. My initial suggestion would be to 'group' the information and make the main menu of those groups. Something like: Home - Sightseeing - Booktown - Book Festival - Activities - Accommodation - Contact. You can then decide if you would like to have drop-down menus from the main menu with the links or some other solution. I won't go into more details here and now but if you would consider that kind of approach drop me a line (you'll find my email in my profile) and we can discuss it further.

Terry, you'll find info about orphan pages on Larry's site here.

Regarding your second site I'd like to mention a couple of points for you to consider. On the 'Accommodation' and 'Facilities' pages I wouldn't use I-frames as they are really not necessary there. The length of the I-frames forces a visitor to scroll down the page in order to be able to scroll the Iframe to the end. Use the space on the page instead. You can make the images a little bit smaller, which will create some more flexibility when making the layout.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Klimt,

Hello all,
My sincerest apologies, I really didn't want to upset anyone, just trying very hard to understand the processes. Ok now I've found it, to get the text box to scroll I need to turn on auto scroll in the text editor, got it. Thanks everyone, your input is most valuable, and sometimes when we forget to think, it's great having someone else give us a nudge. When ever I've finished building a site especially one such as this that has been keeping on the go for 18 hours a day the past three weeks (I also have a project to run) I always ask other people to look it over and find mistakes, because eventually I get square eyes.

Klimt, you are an angel, thank you for you valuable input, I am going to redo the whole site, it was a matter of getting it up as soon as possible, but I must add that I have tried on numerous occassions to do drop down menu's and mine never work, even after I've spent days on them, including going over the tutorial step by step. But I agree wholeheartedly that the site must be categorised, I'll shout again in your direction as soon as I get stuck.

Many thanks again for an insightful and informative forum, I appreciate all of you.

Michael

Pakedi South Africa

If it's only the drop-down menus from the tutorial that keep you sleepless you are welcome to use the ones I've created for SS users here.

Hello Roma,

Thank you, I'll need to get my i-frames sorted first as they all need to be changed and then do the new menu buttons. One question in building the current site, I had to create a separate i-frame (holding page) for each of the individual scrolling pages, my question, can I create one frame on the index page, with all the links on it, and then have that page remain static, with all the other pages opening into the i-frame as the links are clicked? and if so how do I do it. Sorry for the big question.

Regards,

Michael

You can do it by specifying a target I-frame in the code field for the links. Details in this Iframe tutorial.

Hello Bruceee,

Thank you, always difficult to do things when you don't know how, this will help me to reduce the number of pages on the site by almost half. Seems I have a lot of work to do, it'll keep me out of mischief for awhile.

Many Thanks,

Michael

Pakedi South Africa

Hello Michael,

It sounds as though you are still persisting with iFrames, and the answer to your question in your second last post is “Yes”.

Firstly, if you are still concerned with search engines, take a look at the link to Larry’s sight that Roma provided (thank you Roma for the link as explanation).

Also, have a look at my example (second post of mine on this thread).

My example only uses two frames on your home page. As I mentioned earlier, you could get rid of one (the menu iFrame) and replace it with a scrollable Text Object.

Then, using Larry’s scripts, you only need the script on the Home page. Then for each page that populates the iFrame, that script would be the same, so you can use the Include option.

Terry

This message has been edited. Last edited by: postyr,

Hi Terry,

Thanks for the info, I would happily get rid of I-frames if it were possible to do the following, (please bear with me I'm going to try and describe and put into words, what I see in my head as happening on the page)

To have the links remain static and visible contiually, so that people wouldn't need to scroll back to the top of the page (I tried to put links at intervals down the page to enable viewers to jump back to the top, but somehow the best I can get is the page re-loading), or all the way to the bottom (which only works if the pages are all the same length, if they're not it's a major amount of work to manually inset the page links at the bottom of each page)

Is there a way to have the text-box (or drop down menu) of links remain visible I guess one might say "floating" at the top of the page (window), while the rest of the page scroll's, or is that again just another form of I-frame?

If you want to throw stones at me for being crazy, it's ok, I can take it!

I'm trying here, really I am.

Thanks again for the input, I am continually stimulated to think, even though it is sometimes way off-page, especially here in the forum.

Regards,

Michael

Pakedi South Africa

I have put together something that I think is what you want.

I have tested it in Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari, and it works fine in all of those. But for some reason, it doesn’t work in IE.

I have double checked and Active Scripting is enabled.

So until I can work out why it’s not working in IE, you will have to trial it with another browser.

If someone else has the answer to that, please let me know.

To see the results of my trial, please click here


The javascript file is available here


Terry